This is the eighth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. It details some of the answers given by the 41 pro-dom/mes who answered the survey. It’s a small group so this is really just for interest only. I might try to do a larger survey some time on this community. It’d be great to get comments from people in this line of work.

Income

The survey asked people to say which quintile of US or UK income they fell into.

The most common response for Pro Dom/mes answering the survey was the second quintile (“More than £13,000 or $11,000 but less than £20,000 or $29,000”), which they were much more likely to fall into than the population as a whole, and a little more likely than all the people who took part in the survey.

Sexuality

six out of ten of the pro dom/mes responding said they were bisexual. Only one respondent said they were homosexual. The rest declared heterosexuality.

More than half said they were Tops/dominants. One in five each said they were either submissive or switch. Half said they were sadists/masochists, a third dominants/submissives and a fifth that their dynamic was Master/mistress and slave.

The top three BDSM components were, first to third, control, bondage and fetish. Pain came fourth.

AZ quarter of the sample offered pro-sub services in addition to pro-dom/me services. Four out of ten also offered other sex worker services.

Relationships

A third said they were not in a relationship and a similar (slightly lower) proportion said that their BDSM relationship was their only relationship.

Play

Three-quarters say they play in private and just less than that play in public.

Just over half have sex with people they play with.

BDSM Spending

In a list of nine areas of leisure spending BDSM came top in order of importance by this group ahead oh holidays, family events and eating out (second, third and fourth).

Nearly three-quarters had spent money on tattoos and just under two-thirds had spent money on body piercings.

Two thirds had spent money on dungeon hire and a third on other people’s pro services.

Nearly all had spent money on shoes and boots and around two-thirds had spent money on latex/rubber (the least common type of fetish wear bought).

The dataset

41 people who said they were pro-dom/mes answered the survey. 27 said they were from the UK, 12 from the USA and two from elsewhere. 31 said they were female, eight male and two other. Two were excluded because their answers appeared to be falsified.

Most said they were in employment – 11 saying they worked up to 34 hours per week and 18 saying they worked 35 hours or more.

It appears that, in most areas bottoms/submissives are more likely to have spent money on fetish clothing than either tops/dominants or switches – but only just: Across all items listed an average of 59% of bottoms/submissives had spent money on something, compared with 58% of tops/dominants (so near it makes no difference). Switches were a lot less likely to have purchased fetish wear of any kind – only 44% had.

As seen in the list above “other” fetish wear is the most likely purchase area reported by all respondents. HoweverTops/dominants were equally likely to have spent money on “symbols of ownership” (72% – just ahead of their likelihood of spending on “other” – 71%). The most likely spending area for switches was “shoes and boots” (55%) and bottoms/submissives were most likely to have invested in “other” – 78%.

Tops and Dominants

Female dominant respondents spent more widely on fetish clothing than did the men who answered the survey. An average of nearly three-quarters of women said they had spent on fetish wear, compared with just over half of men. Women tops/dominants were more likely to have spent on fetish wear than men in every area listed.

Women tops/dominants were more than twice as likely to have spent money on corsets than men and three times as likely to have bought latex/rubber wear.

Symbols of ownership were the most popular area of spending recorded by male tops/dominants (70%), whilst women tops/dominants who responded rated them third, after corsets and shoes & boots.

Switches

As with Tops/dominants, female switch respondents were more likely to have spent money on each area of fetish wear listed. On average 31% of male switches had spent money on fetishwear, compared with 55% of women of the same orientation.

The biggest difference was in “corsets” where 48% more women than men had made a buy. 34% more women had also purchased fetish shoes or boots and 27% more had bought latex or rubber wear.

However, only 8% of male switches reported buying rubber, compared to 35% of women – this means female switch respondents are more than f0ur times as likely to have rubber or latex in their wardrobe.

Bottoms/submissives

Bottoms/submissives who responded said they were slightly less likely to have spent on BDSM clothing than Tops/dominants and slightly more likely to have spent than had switches. an average 49% of male bottom/submissive respondents said they had spent on fetish wear since the beginning of their interest in BDSM, compared with 61% of women.

The most likely spending area for bottom/submissive respondents was corsetry (a third of men and three-quarters of women). Women were also much more likely to have spent money on shoes and boots.

Bottoms/submissives are the only BDSM orientation where male respondents were more likely to have purchased some items than women.

Men were slightly more likely than women to say they had bought leather clothing (men – 49%; women – 43%).

But men were much more likely than female respondents to say they had bought rubber or latex items at some point (men – 44%; women – 32%).

Level of spending on fetish clothing items

As with the previous post on spending on clothes (a USA/UK comparison) I tried to calculate an average amount spent on each clothing area by taking the midpoint of each range I’d asked people
to say their total spending on an item fell into (other than the top range “more than £/$10,000”, where I just used £/$10,000) and then dividing the total of reported spending by the number of people who’d said they’d spent money on that type of clothing to give some sort of average spend per person. I didn’t analyse this sample into US/UK respondents, so the figure used bears no relation to spends in either UK pounds or US dollars – all one can say is that it gives a relative measure of the amounts all respondents said they had spent on different types of fetish clothing.

Switches spent less than either tops/dominants or bottoms/submissives in every area except one – rubber/latex and in that area switches spent really big – more than three times as much as they did on the two areas they rate joint second (Leather and Other). For tops/dominants rubber/latex was the clothing type they had spent the second most on (shoes and boots cam first – 9% ahead). Bottoms/submissives spent most on “other”, 4o% more than their second biggest spending area – latex/rubber .

The dataset

Up to 384 people answered this question. The sample breaks down as follows:

People could choose not to answer the questions – so totals don’t always add up.

What we like to wear

Overall, British respondents were more likely to spend money on BDSM clothing than people from the USA (The UK mean for spending on BDSM Clothing was 59%, the US mean was 52%), with the exception of leather – where the USA was 2% more likely to have spent on leather (not a big difference really).

Brits seem to like their shoes and boots more than Yanks: just under two-thirds of Americans have spent money on fetish footwear whilst just over three-quarters of British respondents said they’d spent in this area.

The most striking difference was in Latex/rubber. US respondents said they were a lot less likely to have spent money on latex/rubber than their UK equivalent: Less than a quarter (22%) of people who said they were from the USA had invested in this area, whilst more than a third (37%) of UK respondents had spent on latex/rubber.

However people who spend on rubber spend big. I tried to calculate an average amount spent on each clothing area by taking the midpoint of each range I’d asked people to say their total spending on an item fell into (other than the top range “more than £/$10,000”, where I just used £/$10,000) and then dividing the total of reported spending by the number of people who’d said they’d spent money on that type of clothing to give some sort of average spend per person. To enable comparison I converted $ to £ at the date of writing (26 July 2015 $1=£0.64). Not only do exchange rates rise and fall, but buying power in the US tends to be larger than in the UK, or so I’m told – so these figures are very debatable.

What they show is that people who said they had bought latex/rubber wear spent an awful lot more on it than survey completers said they spent on any other area of fetish wear. Rubberists, since their interest in BDSM started, said they had spent an average of £739 on rubber and latex clothing (£795 for UK respondents and £682 (equivalent = £1,066) for USA respondents. That’s 56% more than the next highest spending category (Other).

Up to 384 people answered this question with up to 104 saying they lived in the USA and up to 261 saying they came from the UK. Respondents from other countries were included under “all” in this analysis but otherwise excluded.

This is the fifth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say which income quintile they were in. 457 people answered this question.

General

The black line on the chart below shows the level you’d expect each bar to be at if the respondent’s answers had been similar to the distribution of income in their country of residence. If the bar falls below or above this line it shows that the respondents to the survey were more or less likely to report a particular level of income than the population as a whole.

So, BDSM & Money respondents are slightly less likely to fall into the lowest income group and slightly more likely to fall into the second lowest income group.

Gender

Male respondents to the BDSM & Money survey were much less likely than the population to fall into the lowest income group and much more likely to fall into the highest income group.

Women were less likely than men to fall into higher income groups and more likely to report lower incomes – I believe this reflects continuing income inequality across populations. Women respondents were most likely to report being in the £13,000-£20,000 (£11,000-$29,000) band.

Tops earn more (and less) than bottoms

I looked at income distribution broken down by BDSM orientation (Tops/dominants, switches or Bottoms/submissives) . A similar proportion of all orientations appear in the mid income group as you would expect from the population as a whole.

Broadly, a similar proportion of switches fell into each income group as the population, with slightly fewer being represented in the second highest income group.

There were distinct differences when it came to those who said they were either tops/dominants or bottoms/submissives.

Tops/dominants told us they were less than half as likely to fall into the bottom income group than the population as a whole. So, this group was less likely to say it was really poor. However, tops/dominants were not more likely to say they were rich! They are pretty close to the 20% expected population in each group except the second lowest income – where they are 7% (roughly a third) more populous than you would expect. This quintile contains 21% of male tops/dominants (pretty much as you’d expect) and 38% of female tops/dominants – way more than you’d expect.

Bottoms/submissives on the other hand are about a quarter (25%) more likely to say they are in the poorest income group – but they are also the most likely to say they are in the top income group too (23%). Gender makes quite a difference: 24% of male bottoms/submissives say they fall into the top income group. as against 18% of women.

The dataset

457 people answered this question 305 were UK residents, 124 from the USA and 28 from other countries. Otherwise, the sample split down as follows:

A note on quintiles

I used US and UK government data to work out five income groups into which 20% of the country’s population would fall. The first group represents the lowest 20% of incomes, the 3rd represents the 20% of people whose income was grouped around the midpoint (median) and the 5th represents the group with the highest incomes, starting at either £43,000 (uk) or $62,000 (US). so the data above shows how much less or more likely the respondents to the survey said they were to fit into their national income groups, split into 5 equal bands. If the survey sample had been completely similar to their national demographic then each band would contain 20% of the respondents.

These figures are likely to have changed since I started the survey. I’m aware UK mean income has dropped significantly.

This is the fourth article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. I asked people to say how much they had spent, since their interest in BDSM began, on tattoos and piercings.

Hands across the sea

There is little difference between the likelihood that US or UK citizens would spend money on tattoos or permanent piercings, just that US respondents were a little more likely to have both. Around a third in both countries have either or both.

Gender differences

Women in the survey appeared considerably more likely to have spent money on tattoos or permanent piercings than men.

26% of men had spent money on tattoos and 42% of women (if you exclude people who earn money from BDSM the proportion of women who said they had spent money on tattoos went down to 35%; for men it stayed the same).

16% of men had spent money on permanent piercings. The proportion was much higher for women: 40% of women had spent money on piercings (if you exclude people who earn money from BDSM the proportion of women who said they had spent money on piercings declined to 30%; for men it stayed the same – 16%).

Almost all of those who had spent any money on piercings or tattoos had spent £/$500 or less. Women were slightly more likely than men to have spent more on than £/$500 on. tattoos.

BDSM Orientation

Only switches said they were more likely to have spent money on permanent piercings (36%) than tattoos (32%). However, across all orientations the difference is low between the two types of body modification.

The dataset

390 people answered this question. 263 said they were from the UK and 104 said they were from the USA. 165 said they were male and 208, female. 131 said they were tops/dominants, 82 said they were switches and 178 said they were bottoms or submissives. Other options were available for country of origin or gender but I’ve not included them in the analysis.

A note on currency

I’ve made no attempt to align spending between US or UK respondents – it’s not just a question of interest rates changing, it’s also that $ seem to buy more in the US, generally, than £ do in the UK – so the figures are only of very general interest. I also reckon some respondents spoofed the figures – which is regrettable.

This is the third article about the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. It looks at just how important the 123 (85 men and 38 women) Top/dominant respondents thought BDSM was is in their order of priority for non-essential or “leisure” spending (we left out items like food, energy, housing costs, etc).

The question listed nine areas of spending and asked people to rank them in order of importance, I then gave a rank of one a score of 9, rank two – score 8,right down to the last ranked (ninth) item having a score of 1.

Overall tops and dominants put BDSM spending higher up their priorities (third rather than fourth) than did all the respondents to the survey. Tops and dominants rated BDSM as their third priority after holidays and family events and just ahead of eating out.

Gender Gap

Male and female tops/dominants who responded had really different views on the place of BDSM in their spending priorities: 26% of women said BDSM was their first leisure spending priority as opposed to just 5% of men.

39% of male tops/dominants put BDSM in their top three priorities for leisure cash, compared with 58% of women.

The Professionals

I was asked on fetlife what effect excluding people of all genders who made an income from BDSM would have. The answer is “a lot”:

The percentage of males saying BDSM is their first priority for leisure spending remains the same (5%), whereas for women it drops to 9% when you exclude people who get an income from BDSM. The proportion of “amateur only” women ( 🙂 ) putting BDSM in their top three leisure spends becomes 33%, whilst for blokes it’s 44%.

42% of women who make money from BDSM put it first on their list for spending and 82% put it in their top three “leisure” spending items.

This is the second article looking at the results of the BDSM and Money Survey. It looks at just how important the respondents think BDSM spending is in their overall order of priority for non-essential spending (we left out areas like food, energy, housing costs, etc). 353 People answered this question – 200 women and 153 men.

Women who responded were much more likely to put BDSM at the top of their spending priorities than men, though, overall, Family events, holidays and eating out were seen as more important spending areas.

The question listed nine areas of spending and asked people to rank them in order of importance, I then gave a rank of one a score of 9, rank two – score 8,right down to the last ranked (ninth) item having a score of 1. This gave the following overall priorities:

For the respondents to this survey, BDSM spending came slightly better than half way up the list for priorities for their leisure cash.

There were some differences in each gender’s spending: Men put holidays first, whilst women made vacations their second priority – with family events coming first. Men thought other hobbies (fifth) should take more of their spending than Christmas (sixth) – women reversed this order.

I converted the scores into percentages (score per item divided by total score for gender) to see whether there was any more enthusiasm for BDSM spending depending on whether the respondent was a man or a woman.

Women respondents appear a little more likely to spend money on BDSM than men. But the difference isn’t much (Men 12%, women 13%), so it hardly seems to matter.

Looking specifically at the order of priority people gave to BDSM spending, I also grouped BDSM spending into those who considered it a top three priority, those who thought it a middle priority (ranked fourth, fifth or six) and those who considered it a lower priority (ranking it seventh to ninth). This did show a clear difference between the genders.

Women were 9% more likely to put BDSM into their top three spending items than men (44% doing so, compared to 35% of men.)

If you just looked at those who made BDSM spending their number one priority the difference was even more marked. Double the proportion of women (16%) said BDSM spending came top in their list. compared with 8% of men.